Grow your MINDSET and make the UNIMAGINABLE HAPPEN | Tim Storey | The 2%

The three primary ways that we learn is education, conversation, and observation. It's very important to realize that if a kid is imagining beyond, that's just where they're at. They're in a playful stage.

Let them just go for it. When I saw Disneyland when I was seven, sorry, people, I was changed for life. You can't get it out of me because I saw it. Now it's too late. Just enhance my miracle mentality. I'm probably going to do something great in life. When you have kids and they say things like, I believe I'm going to go to the moon, just say, you never know, it could happen.

Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the 2%, where, as always, we are having incredible discussions with peak performers in all walks of life. Why? To decode excellence. To help you get hold of practical tips, tools, strategies that you can harness today for immediate benefit. To close that gap between your current and best self. To break free from that 98% and join the 2% of estimated people operating at their full potential. And I am super excited to have Tim Storey on the show today. Tim is an acclaimed author, speaker, speaker life coach. He basically helps people create the future that they desire. He's the author of multiple books. We're definitely going to be talking about his newest book called the Miracle Mentality on the show today. And Tim's worked with some pretty amazing people and interacted with some pretty larger than life folks, people that you would have certainly heard of. So he's been a featured guest with Oprah. He's also been a coach to Robert Downier Jr. Kanye West. And I am so excited to have Tim on the show today. Tim, welcome to the show. How are you, man?

Good. Good to see you. And I love the idea of the show. I love how you're thinking because we can really learn, like success does, leave clues. And you're helping to give us clues on how to take everything in our life to the next level. I love the idea.

That's a wonderful word, clue. Reminds me of the game growing up as well.

Yes.

What was. Let's pull on that thread for a moment there. So what was the first kind of success clue that you came across in your younger days?

Yes, I would say it would be for my brother, who four years older. He was meticulous. And so in the way he did everything, it had to be done. Right. And I'm gonna blow you away, Eric. Cause this is funny. We went to a Toys R Us. You remember that? They had this store called Toys R Us.

Yeah, Favorite store to go to.

Yes. And so he bought a model, but he bought, like, a difficult one. It was like a pirate ship, and he had to, like, put these sails on, and he had the glue. And when it was done, everything was so perfect. Like, if I would have done it, I would have tried to rush through it, to do it quicker. He was meticulous, and so he would mow the lawn that way, he would edge the lawn that way, and, you know, that's why he became an engineer. I mean, he thought that way. So watching my brother, who was my roommate, be so meticulous actually was something that I thought was interesting about life at an early age.

And was that. Did you. Did you. Was that the opposite, for example, of how you were? Did you feel that you had to close a big gap there between how your brother was and you were?

It was a small gap because I wanted to get it done in a thorough manner.

But I didn't know why. You know, you're doing this model, and you can't let a little bit of glue be showing. Yeah, it was real touchy on you. You can't see any glue, Timmy.

So it was a short gap that I. That I learned a lot from him, and I actually have become a lot more like him.

Awesome. Awesome. Love it. Tell us. So the miracle mentality. So I know that that is basically a roadmap, right? To get past negative thinking. Yes. Which holds us all. It happens to us all. Right. Even in the course of a day. So, for example, today I had a moment. I was going through the day, and I'll be honest, I had one of those just moments where I was just, ah, the heck with this. What am I doing? This is, like, such a waste of time. I had too much in my schedule and just getting, like, upset and irritated, and I caught myself because I was like, oh, my gosh, hang on. This is like a negative spiral here. So it happens to us all the time. Right. So tell us about the book. I'd love to hear, you know, a little bit about it. Synopsis, maybe some practical tips, tools.

Well, number one, I want to say this is that I think that many times I say things that other people have said, but I say them in my way and many times my interpretation. So I think that there have been some other great books in the past, like Think and Grow Rich or Marianne Williamson, her Course of Miracles. Some people have liked that. But I feel that I have a certain vantage point on this whole idea of the miracle mentality that seems to be working and so to me, you know, as you know, a miracle is something extraordinary, uncommon, not normal. Okay, So I don't know about you, I don't want to be just normal, regular, status quo or mundane. So I began to do a lot of research and find that this is a gift that most children have. It's innate that they want to do something miraculous or magical. And as I begin to travel the world and speak in third world nations, many times I would say to kids, what do you want to be when you get older? And they would say things like, a professional athlete or, I want to be a ballerina or a doctor or a president. They never said, like, lower tier things. And so I began to do research for years. This book took me like seven years to combine and compile. And I found that somehow somebody done pickpocketed a lot of our miracle mentalities. Because as kids, we were like, it could happen. You become like 20, 25, 30, and you start to question yourself. So the book really takes time to show the different ways that we may have minimized our miracle mindset and mentality. And it's really good. I think, between me and my amazing editor who teaches at Princeton, I'm very excited about the job that we did.

I like the way you talk about that just now, because when you root it in childhood, obviously we can all relate to. And everyone can kind of relate to that limitless thinking. Right. I'm going to become the next star athlete or president or all that stuff. And kids, like you said, the kids just naturally do that. Right. So.

What do you think gets in the way? How do we end up kind of losing those dreams or caging ourselves somehow?

Yeah, I think there's no doubt about it. A lot of it has to do with who our tutors and mentors are in the early.

Years. So let's say that you got this kid and he says, I have an imaginary friend. And the mother gets very nervous, like, oh, this kid could be weird. He or she has an imaginary friend. Or, you know, I believe someday I'm going to the moon. Like, get realistic. Okay? So I think that it's very important to realize that if a kid is imagining beyond, that's just where they're at. They're in a playful stage.

Let them just go for it. Right?

Yeah, totally.

So I think one of the things, Eric, that diminishes is the tutors.

The mentors, the parents, many times that are in the child's life. And they are trying to really minimize all this maximized thinking. Okay, so that's one. Then the other thing is that I think that even for kids, they are being rushed through life so quickly that, you know, kindergarten, they're already starting to get homework in certain areas that I travel in first grade, they're already starting to get, like, homework second grade. And so I think that we're, like, putting too much on kids sometimes and not giving them enough time to just get into that imaginary space.

Yeah, that's powerful because for all the parents watching or listening, and I'm certainly one of them.

Are we doing enough right to keep our kids kind of youthful, fun, vibrant, imaginative, playful? Because as you're saying that the system is very much almost like in a factory sort of way, is starting to layer in quite early on a lot of constraints, requirements, conditioning, and all that adds up.

Can you take us through some practical tips or tools that you use or you've seen use with success to help reignite that dreamlike state again, that miracle mentality again? Yeah.

So I think that what happens is that we have what I call life interruptions that happen to us early on. It could be. I've had friends in elementary school, we found out they had asthma. I remember a girl that I was in fourth grade with, she had problems with her spine, and she used to wear this brace and went to her neck. She's very, very pretty. And that was new to the class. We didn't know about things like that.

There are kids that have physical life interruptions, emotional life interruptions.

Chemical life interruptions, mental health problems, parents get divorced, things happen. And life interruptions.

I find many times can cause people to sit in a setback for too long, and an interruption hits, and then they don't know how to handle it. So they sit in the setback, and they settle in the setback and many times cement themselves in a setback. So as I life coach people, some of the brightest people in the world, I find that a lot of them feel like they were set back early in life. Like, things that happen to them at, like, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years of age. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. All right, so now we have to say, what? What do we do? And that was your question. And I'll give this short list to you. Number one, we have to become awake, become conscious, and pay attention. You become awake. Secondly, you take inventory. And I'm beginning to hear that word a lot. But I promise you, I've been talking about taking inventory for 25 years. But you have to take proper inventory of, okay, how am I doing? Like, what's the clarity of my mind. Do I have any joy left? How's my imagination? You know, am I kind to others? Am I working through addiction? If I have addiction, like, number one, become awake. Number two, take inventory. Number three, partner with power. And that's the beautiful thing about 2021 is that I can watch your podcast.

And even if I'm a person that doesn't know you personally, I can partner with power just by watching you. Isn't that awesome?

Yeah.

So those would be my first three steps.

And it's really important to choose, like, who we're spending our time with. Right.

I had a very interesting call earlier today where.

This individual talked about how he basically, you know, came from a family that.

His family basically communicated to each other that, hey, we aren't anything. You know, nobody in this family is exceptional, so sort of like, stay in your place. Yeah, right. And I thought, you know, that's. It's just incredible the impact that he said that, that had on him because that, he said that that led in terms of partnering, you know, for power, that that led him to do the opposite. So instead he's, he was partnering up, he was having relationships with people that he would describe to be either at his level or below. Yes. That he was in this protected kind of either peer to peer were the same or I'm slightly superior position.

Yes.

And that it also put him into this space of wanting to always stay in his comfort zone. Right. Not, not, not too much.

Yeah. Because at that point with the parents and bless the parents, hearts, maybe they didn't get it from their parents.

And so I never try to fix the blame on the parent or the grandmother or the aunt or the uncle.

Because you don't know how they were raised. Maybe they just don't know any better. Right. But I don't know, Eric, if you remember the saying, there was this. There used to be a saying and kids would say, I know something you don't know. And the whole idea is, I have a secret. And what I feel like in today's world is that kids look at their parents like, I know something you don't know. In other words, you've given me access to the television you let me borrow, watch your iPhone.

I have my own gadgets and devices, and I'm figuring things out that are bigger, broader, and I think better than what I'm seeing in this house. I promise you, that's one reason kids are so bored with their families at like, family dinners. Because let's say if the dad is grouchy and the mother's grouchy. The kid is, like, getting exposed to other things that he's finding fascinating. So he cannot wait for that dinner time to end so he can get back. Or she could get back to fascinating. I shared this with a top psychologist, and she said, oh, my gosh, this is brilliant. Yeah. Because they got, like, a secret.

Yeah.

They know about other stuff going on that's beyond this limited belief that's going on at the Joneses house.

That's awesome, because that makes me think of a couple of things come to mind from what you just said. So one is, once again, for the parents out there who are sitting there trying to rack their brains, like, why don't I seem to have, like, a meaningful or deeper connection with my children? Or why is it that they don't seem to want to spend time with me? Or, like, the conversation runs out. Well, because maybe you're not saying anything that's, like, interesting or that relates to their aspirations or dreams or, you know, is opened up to all the possibility. Maybe you're talking about things that are quite closed in the realm of.

You're exactly right, Eric. And because what's happening is that so many times the parents are so caught up in parenting that they're not. They're not listening. And, like, because I love to study and I love facts, sometimes people will tell me information that's not accurate. Okay. And I will tell you.

20.

Times if that happens. I might correct somebody once if it's just, like, totally off.

Yeah. Yeah.

But like, for instance, they may say to me, tim, did you hear there was a earthquake in the Philippines? It was 8.3. And I know for a fact it wasn't because I. I saw it on three different agencies that said it was 6.1. Big difference. Six, one, eight three.

Yeah.

Earthquake. Right.

Exactly.

And I'll say to that person that doesn't have their facts right. That's interesting. Okay. I won't correct them. And I think again, when you have kids and they say things like, I believe I'm going to go to the moon, just say, you never know, it could happen. Or, did you know that? And even if they're telling you facts that are not correct, I don't think it's our place to always try to correct everything. Just let it fly. Just let it fly.

Let it fly, let it flow. And another thing that I wanted to touch on that you said.

You kind of anecdotally said, well, your parents might have gotten it from their parents. And I think it's good to really focus in on that. Because again, if someone's thinking, yeah, well, I want to be dream. I used to dream as a kid and somewhere that's become inhibited, and it's like, be careful. Don't seek to blame your parents, because that could have just been an inherited thing. And instead maybe step back and say, hang on, is this belief pattern even mine? Or have I inherited it from someone else? And then did they inherit it from someone else? And did they inherit. And that then leads to this quite, I think, liberating, exciting moment where you can say, ah, so maybe henceforth I break the chain in this family.

Yeah, I like how you're thinking. And again, you know, God bless them. I don't think they were trying to have boring Thanksgivings on purpose. I'm sure a lot of hard work went into that or a boring Christmas, but it just was what it was, and they knew what they knew, and so therefore they manifested that most times. Right?

Yeah.

But, Eric, as we learn, and I talk about in my book, Miracle Mentality, the three primary ways that we learn is education, conversation, and observation. Okay? So education, conversation, observation. So when I saw Disneyland when I was seven. Sorry, people, I was changed for life. You can't get it out of me because I saw it now. I saw rockets that were flying. I saw a bear, and the country bear jamboree who was singing. And I went on, it's a Small World. So you cannot get it out of little Timmy. It's too late. You just enhanced my miracle mentality. I'm probably going to do something great in life.

Beautiful.

Beautiful.

Now, if you, Tim, if you could. If you could mentor only one person in the world. Yes. In the miracle mentality. And it can't be a family member or friend. So the goal is mentor one person in the world, obviously, to create as much impact as you can.

Yes.

Who would it be and why?

Well, I would say, number one is.

Let'S say if I was to get.

A young man that was bagging groceries at Whole Foods, just go with me on this. And he's 18 and he's stuck.

Because this happened to me six months ago.

Right.

Sees me roll through and he just stares at me. I go, how you doing? He goes, whoa, Tim story. I said, yeah, because I follow you. So I don't know if they have real baggers at Whole Foods because I'm not there a lot. But he was helping somehow with the food. Okay.

Yeah.

So we start to dialogue, and he goes, man, I wish I could talk to you.

More.

I go, you can. I said, do you have a phone? He goes, yeah, I'm not supposed to take it out. I said, well, help me with what I'm doing, and you walk with me a few steps. I'm gonna give you my number. So I talked to him three times on the phone. He felt like he was stuck. He was stuck. He was 18, graduated high school, was going to a community college that's in our town. He says, I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. After two conversations on the phone, he said, I don't usually get emotional, but I want to tell you, Mr. Story, you've literally changed my life.

Because I taught him how to soar with his strengths. He was so caught up on what he wasn't doing and how he wasn't measuring up to what the parents wanted him to do because his dad was in the medical field, and his father was very disappointed with him that his grades were not up to where they should have been in the dad's eyes. So the kid felt like he was in a setback and he was a failure.

Are you with me?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I said, that may not be your pathway. So to get him to the miracle mentality, what I wanted to show him was, hey, is that a miracle mentality for your dad? Is not the same thing necessarily for you, that life is more than mundane, messy, and madness, that life has something miraculous for you, like, what would you like to do if you knew you couldn't fail? And that's a question that a lot of us asked, but he'd never been asked that. He said, I want to make music. And he goes, my dad thinks that I'm crazy for that. There's no money in that. I said, let's go for it. I said, for the next two years of your life, let's make music, and let's see where that takes us. I'm telling you, it's like his soul just got liberated. Why? Because I told him it was okay to be himself. And you've heard the same before. You've been born in original. Don't die a copy. Someone was trying to make him into something he was not.

You know what, Tim? I actually haven't heard that before, and that is one heck of a saying. That's amazing. So you're born an original, don't die a copy. I love that. That's really.

I've been saying it for years, but there's. I would say, out of the hundred, like, really well known Tim Story sayings, there's about three that other people say. And I know I didn't get them from them, but I don't want to, like, take credit for them if they're acting like it was theirs.

Okay, well, that's very, very Zen of you.

So you talked about. So, okay, so miracle mentality, definitely. You know, if you're watching, listening, check that book out on its way to bestseller status, if it's not already by the time you see this. And, yeah, all about unlocking your mentality, returning you. Less about making you into someone that you're not. It's more about returning you to who you were.

100%.

And how freeing is that?

Yes. Yeah, Right.

Like, let me give an example. So Christian Lassen, who. Who is a great painter. He does a lot of underwater work, like whales and fish. I was talking to his mother in Maui, Hawaii, one day, and Christian has made into the tens of millions. It's that much money that he's made from his art. Very, very famous Christian Lassen, if you look him up. So his mother said that when he was in the third grade, the teacher asked her to come to school. She was concerned. She says, he's looking at outside of the window and he sees trees, but he's drawing whales.

I love it. He sees trees, he's drawing whales. In other words, your kid's messed up. No, he's becoming Christian Lassen, who's about to be worth tens of millions.

Fantastic. I love that.

Isn't that something?

That is. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. So, again, and that goes back to your point earlier, too, about making sure that especially, you know, with. With the youth, with our kids, that we don't. Don't necessarily try to rein them in. Like, let them stay free. Let them see what they see. Let them believe what they believe. Right. You know, support them, encourage them.

Like, I was reading this book called Quiet. It's really good book, and it's about the power of the introvert. It's amazing how we try to think that it's the extroverts that are the greatest leaders. It's the extroverts that are the best salespeople. I'll tell you what. I know some introverts that have done some amazing things. And so I think that it's very important for us to get educated and learn from other people, have great conversations that will build us, have observations that will enhance us. But at the end of the day.

Learn to be comfortable with the way God made us and be ourselves. Like, for me, I'm not a real competitive person outside of sports. I was when I played sports, but that was just to win on that court or that field. I didn't take it off there. So if someone says to me, look what Tony Robbins is doing, don't you want to do that? No, that's Tony Robbins. And I don't even want to be Denzel Washington or Brad Pitt. I want to do what I'm supposed to do. And what I'm doing is I'm enhancing people's lives.

You were born an original. Don't tie a copy.

Don't die a copy.

Daily, daily habits. If we were going to try to install some of this wisdom more regularly, more effortlessly, we wanted to start with small habits that we could practice on a daily basis to kind of restore this mentality within us. What's the first thing that comes to mind that people should be practicing?

You have to definitely renew your mind every day. So.

I am.

Way overboard on this. And part of that is because in my house as a kid, there was a lot of chaos.

And when you hear that chaos, if you're not careful, you'll take that to school, you'll take that to Little League practice, you'll take it everywhere. I didn't, you know, blurt it out. I didn't come off in a wrong way because of all the chaos, but it definitely clouded my mind. So now that I am older.

I learned that I can create my own tempo and my own temperature. So I create the temperature in my house, not by just changing something, but in my mindset.

I create a really great temperature. Isn't that powerful?

How do you do?

I create a tempo. I renew my mind. So, like, for instance, if I'm reading a book, when I wake up in the morning, I wash my face, I brush my teeth, and then I'll read at least 20 minutes of something that really touches my life and builds my faith. Because my background is, you know, seminary doctrine, world religion. I'm really into the Psalms and the Proverbs. So every single day I go there and I build my faith and I starve my doubts. I build my faith and I starve my doubts. And so by the time I get out here to talk to intelligent, great people like yourself, my mind is already renewed. I already have a certain temperature and a tempo. It's hard to take Tim Storey off my tempo. No matter what happens, someone can hit me here, smash me here, fire can turn off there. It's pretty hard to take me off my tempo because I become a pro at renewing my mind and having this miracle mentality. And as you know, a mentality is a frame of mind. It's a mindset. Like I am fixed in my mind that life is good, even though I see bad all the time. I just officiated a funeral two days ago that wasn't fun. But life is still good. In the midst of all we face, life is still good. That's my mentality.

Love it. Love it. It reminds me of.

The path to unconditional happiness.

Yes.

In the untethered soul.

Now, the show is called the 2%, right? So if you were. If you could only share one success secret with the world, something that would help the vast majority of people to unlock their potential, break free from that 98%. Join the 2% of people estimated to be playing to their full capabilities, what do you recommend that they do?

I got it. I got it. So I did this research one time and I found out, and this will just tell this in three minutes that the Kenyans like, from Kenya, Africa, yeah. They keep winning these marathons. So you people that love to Google and Wikipedia things, you'll see that there was a time that the Kenyans were winning like the New York Marathon and the Boston Marathon, like 80% of the time. So I'm curious, okay. So I started studying that these Kenyans, it wasn't by accident. Watch this. They train going uphill on purpose. They train on rocky roads on purpose to get better footing. Watch how awesome this is. They train in high altitude.

On purpose. They train in extreme heat on purpose. And they build each other up as fellow Kenyans on purpose. And they have a certain Kenyan stride that's on purpose.

So one Kenyan said this. He said, no matter if there's 30,000 people in the Boston Marathon, so it is that, give or take. Okay? He said at mile 17.

For those that are trying to win the marathon, the Kenyans just sit back and realize we're going to win. And he says, because we've trained in all these ways, he said, when we go to Boston, it's like running downhill. Oh, my God, that was powerful.

He said. So for me and the Kenyans I run with, he goes at about mile 19. All we do is stare at each other. And that stare means run like a canyon.

That's awesome.

I love it. So they've created so much stress right beyond what's to be expected in the race. And it's just easy for them by the time they get to it. And then they have that self belief that comes from being forged in those More stressful conditions. Right?

You said it perfectly. And then they give each other the look. And I believe that that's the look that Larry Bird gave to Magic Johnson, that Magic gave to Michael Jordan. Are you with me? So when they played in the 92 Barcelona Olympics and, you know, they did not want to be beat by the other people, they basically were looking at each other and saying, run like a canyon. So I have friends that we have that look. There's a look. There's just a look.

Come on, man.

It's game time.

We were built for this.

I love it. I love it. Tim Storey, thank you so much. Again, if you're watching, listening, Tim's an incredible guy. As you've heard, lots of wisdom, teeming with great advice. Advice that he's not only lived himself, but that, as mentioned, he shares with literally some of the highest profile people in the world, as mentioned earlier, from Oprah to Robert down your junior to Kanye west to countless others that you can see on Tim's website. On that note, Tim, where's the best place for people to kind of connect with you or learn more? Get a copy of the Miracle Mentality. Where should they go?

Yeah, I think Tim story.com so you guys will put it in there. But story is spelled S T O R E Y. And then the book, you can get an audible. It's my voice. I do a lot of voiceovers for other things, and so it's my voice. And I think you really enjoy the book because it just helps to align you for the miracle mentality. Job, career, family, parenting. There's a chapter on all these different areas, so timstory.com But Eric, thank you for having me your space on your podcast. I like what you're about.

No problem at all. Pleasure's all mine. Tim. Yeah. Really great to meet you. Wonderful to hear that. We have some shared friends and I'm a fan. And yeah, thanks again for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Sa.